


I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

by Tigerlilly244



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Ax is in here so I could make him say the word 'scrub', F/M, It's just supposed to be a fun thing, Major Spoilers, Marco is only referenced to, Saving the world is hard, Spoilers up to Book 23, The kids need a break, They go on a movie date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tigerlilly244/pseuds/Tigerlilly244
Summary: I am predator and prey. I am human and hawk. I am Tobias.And Tobias? Well, for just one day, Tobias would like to try being a normal teenager again. Don’t get me wrong, I know that this is why I’m struggling in the first place — just wanting to be normal. But I don’t think a break will hurt. And I can think of at least one other teenager who might enjoy the same thing. A break.It would take just a little bit of planning on my part, and a whole lot of crossed tail feathers that a certain Visser doesn’t get it into his big dumb yeerky head to do something evil this weekend.Because that would just ruin everything.
Relationships: Rachel (Animorphs)/Tobias (Animorphs)
Kudos: 8





	I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers up to Book 23: The Pretender.

My name is Tobias. I can’t tell you my last name, and it’s not just because I can’t remember it as well as my friends can remember theirs. It’s because we’re in the middle of a war, and if our true identities are revealed, then there’s no hope at all for Earth.

You see, as far as we know, my friends and I are the only ones standing between Earth and a race of parasitic aliens called the yeerks. The yeerks are slowly taking over Earth, crawling into ear canals, and wrapping and flattening themselves around human brains, creating what we call Controllers. Anyone can be a Controller. Your parents, your teachers, your brothers and sisters — anyone. Our principal is a Controller. And our leader Jake? His brother is a Controller too. Now you know why we can’t just give out our full names.

But for me, it’s not that big of a problem. I’m not like my friends, I don’t have to worry about names. I’m not human anymore. I’m a red-tail hawk. Surprised? Confused? Maybe I should back up a little. 

The only reason my friends and I are able to fight the yeerks is because we have the ability to morph into any animal we touch. We weren’t born with this power, it was given to us by an alien, an andalite, named Elfangor. He gave us the ability to morph using advanced andalite technology, a serious no-no among his people. But what else could he do? Desperate situations call for desperate solutions. And then he was murdered by Visser Three, the only yeerk to ever control an andalite body, the only yeerk with the ability to morph.

However, there’s a price to pay for morphing. If you stay in a morph for too long, you can never return to your own body. That’s what happened to me — I stayed in a morph too long and now I’m stuck this way forever. I guess it’s not so bad being able to fly and all. I got used to it pretty quickly, you know, there being no way to undo it and all. At least, that’s what I thought.

A being called the Ellimist promised me a reward if I helped rescue the only two free Hork-Bajir in the world. In the universe. I wanted my humanity back. I did what I was told. But in the end, I felt like I was tricked. I didn’t get my human body back — not truly. I am only able to morph into my old human form for two hours. My ability to morph was returned but now I am faced with a new choice, a choice that I struggle with every day. Keep my ability to morph and allow my true body to remain as a red-tail hawk, or lose the ability to morph and remain a human forever.

It shouldn’t be a contest, right? I want to help my friends fight this war. I used to feel so useless on missions, just being a hawk. Sometimes it feels like all I’m good for is being a pair of eyes in the sky. And while that’s helpful on a lot of occasions, there was no way for me to join my friends when they morphed into dolphins to save our friend Ax, Elfangor’s younger brother, from the bottom of the sea. 

So getting back in the game and being able to morph? It’s an incredible gift. I want to be happy with it, but lately I’ve felt miserable. I was ready to give it all up and be human forever for a woman who called herself Arisa — a woman who called herself my cousin and who promised that she would take care of me when no one else would.

Of course it was a lie. I feel foolish to have even hoped. It was Visser Three in a morph, asking big questions and believing that I was the answer to them all. And maybe he walked away confident that I wasn’t a threat, but I left feeling devastated and confused. 

Elfangor’s son. I am the son of Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. Quite a mouthful, I know. But I don’t know what to think about the letter that Mr. DeGroot read to Visser Three and me in his office. All I know is that it helped me come to terms with certain things, and displaced me in other ways.

I am predator and prey. I am human and hawk. I am Tobias.

And Tobias? Well, for just one day, Tobias would like to try being a normal teenager again. Don’t get me wrong, I know that this is why I’m struggling in the first place — just wanting to be normal. But I don’t think a break will hurt. And I can think of at least one other teenager who might enjoy the same thing. A break.

It would take just a little bit of planning on my part, and a whole lot of crossed tail feathers that a certain Visser doesn’t get it into his big dumb yeerky head to do something evil this weekend.

Because that would just ruin everything.

—

I felt a little bit like a common crow, flying around looking for anything shiny that caught my eye. But in the end it would be worth it to fly around all day, carefully collecting coin after coin from parking lots and drive-through lanes. I even got lucky and managed to find a couple of dollar bills. By the end of the day, I had found and picked up around $20! Not too shabby for a bird boy without an allowance.

I stored all the money in a glass jar that I borrowed from Cassie’s barn, and carefully tucked it into the roots of my tree in my meadow, hidden from view. I didn’t think any animals or people would come along and steal it, but there’s no such thing as being too careful. After all, what if Ax stumbled across it and got it into his head that he could buy a Cinnabon with it? Even worse, what if he realized that he could buy more than one? None of us really needed to handle Ax barfing up an entire tray of cinnamon rolls again. He knew what money was for, he’d even tried to get a job at the mall once before blowing it and getting caught by Marco. 

By the time I was satisfied with my work, the sun was already beginning to set. But I flew to Rachel’s house anyways. Despite her complaints that a certain bird kept waking her up at night, Rachel always left her bedroom window open for me. I flew around her house, watching and listening. She was alone in her room, and I couldn’t hear or see her mom or sisters.

I flew into her open window and landed carefully on her bedpost. She looked up from where she sat at her desk, cheek in hand, pencil tapping against her mouth. “Just in time,” she said, “I don’t get this math problem at all.”

<You know Rachel, I’m not even in school and somehow I can figure out your homework just fine.> I fluttered over to her desk, and looked at her textbook.

“Ha, ha.” She pushed the book towards me and held the pencil out to me as if I could write with my wings or talons. “Then you do it genius.”

<Hmm, I’m willing to help — for a fee.>

“What can I possibly give you?” Rachel asked, rolling her eyes.

<Well I was thinking…>

“A dangerous thing to do,” she said. I would have rolled my eyes back at her if I could. Instead I just turned my head and fixed her with a single eye.

<I was thinking that maybe you could give me some of your time. Your free time. You know, if you’re free this upcoming weekend, I’d like to take you to the movies. My treat.>

Rachel dropped her pencil and stared at me. I tried not to show my discomfort by flapping my wings, so I just kept staring back at her until she shook her head. “Your treat? No offense Tobias, but where does a bird even get money?”

<Now, now Rachel. I can’t go giving away all my secrets, I have to maintain some of my mysterious charm!>

“Alright, fine. But just checking: are you asking me out on a date?” She leaned forward, still resting her face in her hand, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

Now I flapped my wings and turned my head to the other side. <Date. Hanging out. Whatever. I just want to spend time with you, you know, not on missions or helping you with your homework — but I do like this a lot too, so don’t start closing your window or anything.>

She studied me closely. “What’s this really about?”

<I was just thinking about what we talked about the other day, you know, before my birthday?> I paused as her face fell and became hard. <I can’t lose my ability to morph, not again, and especially not after Visser Three turned out to be my cousin.> I felt my feathers start to ruffle and poof out along my chest. I’m still angry and devastated by the discovery. <But for a couple of hours we can just, I don’t know, go to the movies!>

Her face softened in an expression I’ve never seen geared towards the other Animorphs. Not going to lie, it made me feel a little special thinking that the look was just for me. This time she didn’t smirk, but a genuine smile spread across her face. “Of course I’ll go to the movies with you. But,” she said and pushed the textbook towards me again, “we’re not going anywhere until this is finished!”

—

<I don’t understand what you are doing.> Ax said, watching me fix my hair and my clothes. <You have all attempted to explain your artificial skins to me, but for what reason are you fixated on your hair?>

“I want to look nice, Ax. What’s hard to understand about that?” 

Ax watched me with his main set of eyes while his stalks moved around, keeping a careful watch. <It is my understanding that you have met Rachel several times, what makes this instance different?>

I sighed and dropped my hands to my sides. “It just is! I don’t have time to explain it right now, Ax-man. I will later though, don’t worry.”

<Well yes, there is only one hour and forty-five of your minutes remaining in your morph.> He approached me and grabbed the collar of my shirt. I squawked, surprised, as he straightened out my shirt and redid the buttons for me. <I remember Rachel fixed my arti…my clothes when we morphed security guards.>

“Oh.” 

<And although I don’t completely understand all the fuss, I cannot have my shorm leaving on an important outing looking like what Marco would call a ‘scrub.’> He finished with my shirt by picking a piece of lint of my shoulder and then he smiled at me with his all four of his eyes.

—

The first thing I did was get all of my change exchanged for bills. The more I thought about counting handfuls of coins over a movie theater counter, the more I cringed. I wanted to look good in front of Rachel, not like a dork.

I took a bus to the mall and waited outside the theater for Rachel, feeling nervous and maybe just a little bit guilty. Jake has made us promise again and again not to morph for fun, but this was more than just a fun outing for me. I needed this. Even if the others went through so much effort not appear as a group very often, it’s better for Rachel to be caught on a date with Visser Three’s latest failed plan than on a date with a _bird_.

My worries melted away when I saw Rachel walking towards me. Marco liked to refer to her as Xena the Warrior Princess, but sometimes I wonder if his little joke isn’t a little too spot on. Even off the battlefield, she’s fierce. People step out of her way when she walks, they turn their heads to watch her pass, and not just because she’s beautiful. It’s the confident tilt of her chin, the sharpness in her eyes, the way she strides forward like she owns everything in front of her. Her energy demands attention. 

I remembered to smile as she got closer and she smiled back. I felt shy all of a sudden and I scratched the back of my neck sheepishly. “Hi Rachel,” I said when she stopped in front of me. “Are you uh, are you ready for the movie?”

“Yeah, of course. What are we seeing?”

“I was thinking _Armageddon_ , unless there’s something else you want to see. Marco said it’s a good movie though, he saw it last weekend.”

“You want to see a movie about the end of the world? On Marco’s recommendation?”

“Too on the nose?”

She grinned at me. “Nah, lead the way.”

—

I felt like a million bucks after buying our tickets and snacks. Rachel had the decency not to look too surprised at my accomplishment but she did raise her eyebrows at me as we walked away from the concessions, popcorn and sodas in hand. “Remember what I said about maintaining my mysterious charm?” I asked her.

“Sure.”

“I’m still not telling you how.” She pushed me lightly, and feeling playful, I bumped her shoulder with mine. We walked into our theater, letting our arms and shoulders brush each other lightly, and I let Rachel pick our seats. 

As the room became dark and the trailers began to play, I leaned in towards Rachel. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom before the movie starts,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”

I planned my morphing ahead of time. _Armageddon_ is over two hours long, but if I planned carefully, I could demorph now and pick a lull in the middle to make sure I didn’t get stuck. People get up during movies all the time to go to the bathroom, so I figure it won’t be a problem if I do the same thing. It’s a little annoying, but it’s not the end of the world.

I walked into the bathroom. There was one man standing near the urinals, but I ignored him and went straight into a stall, locking the door behind me. I stood away from the toilet, and began unbuttoning my nice shirt, revealing a not-as-nice shirt underneath. My morphing shirt. All of our morphing clothes are skintight and don’t match. In the past, Marco has tried to rally us into getting matching outfits — to complete the Animorph team look — but we’ve never gone through with it. I carefully set my nice clothes aside and began to demorph.

No morph is ever the same twice, but sometimes you can notice a trend in the way they happen. For instance, when a human morphs into a bird, an almost tattoo-like pattern will appear on the skin in the shape of feathers. That’s what I saw happening to my own arms as I shrunk, the walls of the stall rising higher around my head. My nose elongated and hardened into a beak, and my vision became sharper.

In just a couple of moments, I was myself again. I ruffled my feathers and waited a moment, listening to the man I had seen earlier. I heard him zip up his pants and his footsteps walking out of the bathroom. Didn’t even wash his hands. Creep. I began to morph back into a human once I heard the bathroom door close.

I began to grow and the ends of my wings split into five uneven, bony fingers. My feathers seemed to dissolve into my skin, becoming soft and pink. My eyesight became noticeably dimmer as my beak shrunk inwards, and I went cross-eyed while trying to watch it disappear into a human nose.

Once I was finished morphing, I quickly got dressed. I left the bathroom and hurried back to my seat. “Did I miss anything?” I whispered to Rachel. She shook her head. I took a sip of my soda and almost burst into laughter when the bubbles and sugar hit my lips — having a mouth again is always so hard to adjust to. I think if I magnified this giddy feeling by five, I’d have a good idea of why Ax acts the way he does when he morphs into a human. Rachel gave me a weird look, so I just smiled and shrugged at her as the movie started. 

We settled down as outer space was projected onto the screen and a narrator’s voice began explaining about dinosaurs and meteorites hitting Earth. We watched the explosion travel across the Earth’s surface as _Armageddon_ was spelled out in fiery orange letters.

The theater burst into laughter as Harry chased AJ around the oil rig with his shotgun, and Grace followed close behind, screaming at him to knock it off. Rachel leaned in towards me as AJ walked animal crackers across Grace’s stomach, resting her head on my shoulder. We giggled as the gang joined in with AJ, singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” before they boarded the rocket.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Rachel. She lifted her head from my shoulder as I stood up and quickly and quietly made my way out of the theater. I hurried to the bathroom. This time it was completely empty. I demorphed and remorphed quickly in the stall, and was still buttoning my shirt as I left the bathroom.

“I’m like Clark Kent,” I muttered to myself as I pushed the theater door open and made my way back to Rachel.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Hey, did I miss anything good?” I asked and she filled me in quickly. We leaned back to enjoy the rest of the movie, now that my morphing timer was reset. But the second half of the movie had a much more solemn tone than the lighthearted beginning, and I found myself reaching out for Rachel’s hand without feeling self-conscious, I was so caught up in the emotion.

Rachel squeezed my hand when Harry pushed AJ back into the air-lock, and the younger man cried and screamed that it was his job. “Take care of my little girl now, that’s your job.” My stomach twisted and flip-flopped as Harry went onto explain how he always thought of AJ as a son and how proud of him he was. 

The end of the movie was bittersweet. As Rachel and I walked out of the theater, intertwined fingers swinging in between us, we were quiet. I thought about our own mission and the sacrifices we had all made so far and how many more we would still have to make. I squeezed Rachel’s hand as we left the mall.

“Did you like the movie?” I finally asked.

“Yeah, I did. Did you?”

“Yeah.” I looked at my shoes as we walked. “I don’t know if I’ll take another movie on Marco’s recommendation though,” I joked.

Rachel grinned at me. “Maybe the end of the world really was a little too on the nose,” she agreed.

“Would you rather stop a meteor from hitting Earth or keep on doing what we’re doing?”

She sighed dramatically. “Well that’s a hard one. You _know_ I get my exercise from throwing down with Hork-Bajir and Taxxon Controllers.”

I laughed. “Yeah but a meteor is a once in a lifetime event, we could stop it and then call it a day.”

“Fair enough,” she said with a smirk. “I still like to exercise though.”

“We all have to stretch our wings somehow,” I said.

We kept on joking as we walked, now that the mood had lightened. We skipped the construction site that held more than its fair share of bad memories for us as we headed towards Rachel’s house. I was disappointed when it finally came into view, wanting to enjoy our time together for as long as possible. Sure, she would continue to leave her window open for me in the evenings or even come to seek me out on her own as a bald eagle, but to walk down the street hand in hand was a completely different experience together.

I considered my recent desire to remain human so that I could enjoy something like this every day. But I couldn’t. I can’t. I can’t ask my friends to keep on fighting while I wait around for Rachel to come back from battle, hoping to go on dates. At least as a red-tail hawk, I can have their backs. I can have Rachel’s back. And every once in a while, when we’re not doing homework in her bedroom or flying through the skies together, we can hold hands.

She studied my face as we came to a halt in front of her house, like she could read my mind. With her free hand, she touched the side of my face. I was surprised by how soft and warm her hand was on my skin as opposed to the light touch of her finger on my feathers. She leaned in and her lips brushed mine. I think I gasped as my heart soared. I kissed her back, gently, enjoying the sensation of our soft mouths pressed together rather than the hardness of my beak against anything else.

Rachel pulled away first. “Thanks for inviting me out,” she said.

“Thanks for coming out,” I said. I didn’t want to let go of her hand but I was almost out of time on my morph. We smiled softly at each other and she let the hand on my face drop away. “I’ll see you tomorrow maybe.”

“Same old, same old?” She asked.

“Same old, same old.” I agreed and let go of her hand. I watched her go inside before stuffing my hands in my pockets, feeling light and heavy all at once. 

I am predator and prey. I am human and hawk. I am Tobias. And today, I got to take break.

**Author's Note:**

> I chose the movie Armageddon for two big reasons: 1) it came out the same year The Pretender came out and 2) it's a date that my parents went on and they love to talk about it. Also, one of the major songs in the movie makes a pretty decent title.
> 
> I feel like this could be a lot longer and with more conflict, but they deserve a break and I wanted to wrap up a WIP. But I hope y'all enjoy it anyways! Thanks for reading! :D


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